The room was not what I had expected.
I don't know what I had expected, something utilitarian, perhaps. Something functional and bare, a panic room in the most literal sense: cinder block walls, emergency supplies stacked in corners, the stripped-down logic of a space designed purely for survival. Some part of me had been braced for cold and sparse and temporary.
This was none of those things.
It was large, larger than it had any right to be given that it existed, apparently, inside or beneath a bookshelf. The ceiling was low but not oppressively so, and the recessed lighting kept it from feeling compressed, giving the space a warmth that softened the dimensions. The floor beneath my bare feet was a deep, dark hardwood, not rough, not cold the way stone would have been, but smooth and r
